Some lucky folk can magically match name and face almost instantaneously.

Not me.

I remember working with a doctor many years ago,

She was able,

within a week, to memorise the names of all the staff on my ward.

Something I hadn’t managed in approaching a decade.

I am sure this worked to her advantage,

Facilitating entry into the team.

My slow, plodding, malapropisms led to a much slower absorption.

It is said that our names are the most beautiful thing we can hear.

I’m not too sure about that; I’ve spent a lifetime disliking Rodney.

I find Copernicus prettier.

Fortunately, the guy who caused me so much upset has a name quite different from the other one; I can’t begin to imagine what the pitta-bread man and the Barcelona chap are called.

Ego is that aspect of our personalities that ensures we have enough confidence to face the challenges of life. Shrink it and we struggle, enlarge it too much and everyone has a hard time.

I don’t think we are designed to look around and see ourselves.

I think of the movie Being John Malkovich – I have written about that before, in relation to probably a bigger bastard than I have been skirting around so far – the former Health Secretary;

It is conceivable that the existence of another mirror-image of ourselves, (beyond an identical twin) potentially halves our ego, three and we are down to thirds and so on. Increasingly diminishing until, like the character played by Michael Douglas in Ant Man who disappears at the end into a quantum ripple.

And now, the secret.

Every time I see this chap – fortunately not something that happens often, I will be returned to this moment, and by association other moments of similarity where real and imagine blur.

One Reply to “Someone I know”

Hi Copernicus!
This is Persephone!
I never met my double and don’t want to!
I of course am now very curious about this unnameable mannerism!
How have you managed to meet so many doubles in a short life?
Love the humour!
Leave you to sort out Freud!